‘The Magic of the Train’ by Lydia Davis

The USA is a country which has largely turned its back on the train as a form of transport, which perhaps accounts for the paucity of the train story (the apotheosis, after all, of the short form) in the North American tradition. Davis (the most reassuringly European of American writers) knows about trains, and the strange effect they have on time. This story is an Einsteinian thought experiment, rendered comprehensible.